The authorities have installed high speed Wi-Fi services in 32 railway stations of the Mysuru Division of South Western Railways as part of the Digital India initiative.
In all, 115 stations in the State have been provided with Wi-Fi connectivity and the remaining are spread over Bengaluru and Hubballi divisions.
This is in fulfilment of the announcement made in the Railway Budget 2016-17 and has been taken up in collaboration with Google.
A release stated that the Railway Board had entrusted this work to Rail-Tel for provision of Wi-Fi at stations across India and Google had expressed interest in the project during the visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Google’s HQ at Mountain View, California.
As part of the project, 115 railway stations in Karnataka have been covered under the project and while Rail-Tel is providing end-to-end network connectivity on Optical Fibre Cable, Google is providing Radio access network equipment besides technology support, the release added.
“Railway stations are frequented by people from all segments of society. This initiative towards ‘Digital India’ will provide high speed access network to all rail users and will be extremely beneficial in bridging the digital divide. Passengers waiting for their trains can remain connected and carry out their work in seamless manner. The story of railway coolie success in the State Public Service Commission examination utilising railway Wi-Fi is the best example of tremendous potential of Wi-Fi service,” the SWR release said.
The SWR claimed it meticulously followed Mission W-Fi and has commissioned the services in 115 stations within 18 months. All the main stations of SWR are connected with high speed Wi-Fi such as Bengaluru, Yesvantpur, Mysuru and Hubballi.
It said all district headquarters (except Madkeri) are covered along with all tier-2 city rail heads and identified smart cities and a majority of taluk headquarters that have railway stations have now been provided with WI-FI network.
The authorities have installed access points at stations where Wi-Fi services have been provided. Each access point covers 25 m to 40 m.
“All platforms and entry areas within station limits are covered by access points and multiple access points are provided at major stations whereas single access points are provided at rural stations,” according to SWR which said that the maximum bandwidth allotted to each station is 1 GB.
Four-digit code
To access the railway Wi-Fi, one needs to enter the four-digit code sent to mobile phones. Once logged in, unlimited service can be availed.
While Internet access with a speed of up to 1 Mbps (upload) & 3 Mbps (download) is provided free to the users for the first 30 minutes in a day, subsequently speed reduces to 64 Kbps. However, access to Railways-related site for information like PNR and train enquiry will continue to be free for unlimited time, the release added.
